AT&T reported its first quarter 2014 results, showing impressive growth in revenues, handset sales and customer acquisition for the quarter. While AT&T operates businesses outside of its wireless division, we're going to focus on this portion. For the quarter, AT&T posted $17.9 billion in revenue including handset sales, up 7 percent year-over-year, leading to $5.1 billion in operating income, up 8.1 percent.

On the customer side, AT&T added 625,000 postpaid customers, its largest first quarter gain in five years. It also added 693,000 "connected devices," but saw prepaid customers dip overall in the quarter mostly due to the loss of over 200,000 reseller subscribers. Of those additions, 311,000 were for postpaid smartphones, while 313,000 were tablets.

AT&T sold 5.8 million smartphones in total for the quarter, making up 92 percent of all postpaid phone sales — which first quarter record. This leads to 78 percent of AT&T's postpaid customers now using smartphones, up from 74 percent this time last year. In terms of connectivity, 57 percent of AT&T's postpaid smartphone subscribers have an LTE-capable device.

One interesting note on the growth was that AT&T says 40 percent of the gross smartphone additions and upgrades came by way of its AT&T Next device installment plan, up from just 15 percent last quarter. Additionally, about 45 percent of all postpaid subscribers are now on a Mobile Share plan, with a full 81 percent now being on some form of usage-based billing (i.e. not unlimited) plan.

Reader comments

"..AT&T says 40 percent of the gross smartphone additions and upgrades came by way of its AT&T Next device installment plan, up from just 15 percent this time last year" Kind of amazing since AT&T Next was released on July 16, 2013. ;) I believe you meant to write "..up from just 15 percent last quarter".

They used to break it down every quarter. It must have gotten pretty embarrassing for all the Android manufacturers to hear that the iPhone dominated 70% of sales on AT&T and over 50% on Verizon, which is Android central. As iPhone growth has been increasing in the US, I suspect the numbers are even worse. It doesn't surprise me that they are no longer reported. That is the only way to keep up the narrative of Android domination. Just omit the numbers that disprove it.